By Chris Hyde

June 3, 2003

Looking for cheap thrills? Then look no further than the recent batch of Midnite Movies from MGM, 4 double features that deliver bikers, bad trips, space monsters, witches, Vincent Price and more--and can be found for sale for about ten bucks.

Currently, some film studios really seem to get the whole idea of releasing the films from their libraries, while others are still more content to allow their great old stock to languish on the shelf. Fortunately, MGM is one company that seems to very much understand how much some of us want to relive these past glories. (Now this may be mostly because these days they desperately need the cash as an operation, but hey, you take what you can get.) Recently they’ve begun releasing some of their films in a fantastic cheapie double feature format that has an MSRP of $14.99, and you can generally find them for a Hamilton out there, if you scout around a little. You’ll also want to run out quick and pick these doubles up soon, as August will be bringing a whole new batch (Countess Dracula/The Vampire Lovers, The Comedy of Terrors/The Raven, The Haunted Palace/Tower of London, Troll/Troll 2, etc) to entertain you later in the summer. So without further ado, let’s scope out the eight movies that you can pick up now for a mere forty bucks:

Invisible Invaders/Journey to the Seventh Planet

Watching two John Agar movies in a row will always remind this writer of the classic Saturday afternoon entertainment of my youth, the “Creature Double Feature” on channel 56 in Boston. The two films delivered here mine that exact same territory, featuring the b-movie actor battling monsters from space. The first film, Invisible Invaders, is an atomic age fable of aliens from the moon coming to earth to stamp out man’s fledgling attempts at space travel and nuclear destruction. Not exactly a thrill a minute, the film does at least feature John Carradine, some hilarious plot holes, and plenty of shambling zombielike aliens that seemingly must have had some impact on a young George Romero. Journey to the Seventh Planet, on the other hand, has Agar flying off to Uranus (which is carefully pronounced throughout the film to ward off adolescent snickering) with a cast of actors who were also seen in Reptilicus. This Sid Pink vehicle has it all—buxom Nordic women, fantastic set design, poorly inserted stock footage, odd compositions, incoherent editing, and a brief but cool stop motion monster. It’s really too bad that AIP felt the need to cut most of Bent Barfod’s bizarre effects, because what little is here sure looks better than those stupid inserted shots from other AIP monster outings. Ah, well. At least the story moves along briskly and there’s some nice psychological undercurrents mixed in as the astronauts stumble haplessly around surrealistic caverns. Recommended.

Cry of the Banshee/Murders in the Rue Morgue

Here’s a double feature of two films directed by Gordon Hessler, a man perhaps most famous for his stellar seventies TV movie Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. Murders of the Rue Morgue plays off the Poe story of the same name, pitting a stiff and out of place Jason Robards against character actor Herbert Lom, who will be recognizable to film fans for his role as Peter Sellers’ long suffering boss in the later Pink Panther films. The film is luckily presented in its original form and not the butchered and confusing version that AIP edited for the American market, and while it’s no epic piece of cinema the movie is entertaining and well made enough to warrant its release in the form the director intended. Cry of the Banshee, on the other hand, is a 1970’s era horror outing starring one of the genre’s truly legendary figures, the great Vincent Price. He plays a cruel English lord bent on ridding his community of a coven of witches, although his own minions are pretty much evil in their own right. He foolishly allows the lead witch to walk away after he kills a number of her followers, and then she of course places a vicious curse upon Vinnie and his family. It’s hard to know whether you’re supposed to cheer for the satan worshippers or the righteous but awful clan Price, but I guess the fact that there aren’t too many sympathetic characters at all here is supposed to soften the final grisly blows. This one isn’t exactly a thrill a minute, but there’s enough gratuitous torture, death and cleavage to make it a worthwhile ninety minutes of entertainment. Additionally, rounding out this double’s package are a couple nifty featurettes and film trailers that add some added heft to these dual tales of woe and Poe.

The Trip/Psych-out

Well, bust out the acid and let your hair grow long. Here we have two lysergic flower power stories of swingin’ sixties era rock, drugs and sex. The Trip stars Peter Fonda as a TV ad-shooting hipster who decides that it’s time to see what all the psychedelic fuss is about. Bruce Dern gets to play his guide, the straight turtlenecked nerd who seemingly gets off on hanging around while others watch the walls melt. Toss in Susan Strasberg, Dennis Hopper, pretty swirling colored lights and lots of groovy dialogue and you’ve got yourselves some really heavy stuff, man. Also included are an audio commentary from schlockmeister Roger Corman (who along the way details his very own experiences with Albert Hoffman’s pharmaceutical discovery), a featurette called “Tune In, Trip Out”, and an American Cinematographer article and interview that talk about the film’s visual effects. Psych-out, on the other hand, is a bit grittier exploration of the dark side of the Sixties, even if Dick Clark did produce it. Here Bruce Dern, Dean Stockwell, Susan Strasberg and Jack Nicholson indulge in psychedelics and sex, freeing their minds to the rockin’ sounds of the likes of The Seeds and Strawberry Alarm Clock. Though the ambiguous screenplay is more or less pretty hackneyed, the film actually looks pretty good thanks to the quality camerawork of Laszlo Kovacs and some inventive visual effects. There really isn’t much of an overall message to this one, but it’s still a nice period piece that depicts a truly unique period in American history. Finally, MGM fleshes out this side of the DVD with a short featurette about Haight-Ashbury, California’s countercultural headquarters for the so-called Love Generation who would later subsequently turn their backs on all this and become today’s soccer moms and drug tested corporate slaves. What a bummer.

Angel Unchained/Cycle Savages